Friday, January 24th, 2014 at 3:15pm Neuberger Hall room 454(Refreshments served at 3:00 in presentation room)This event is free and open to the public.

Abstract: We consider scattering of electromagnetic waves by a thin structure of high index of refraction. We first consider the Helmholtz equation, andshow that if the squared refractive index scales as $O(1/h)$ whereh is the thickness of the scatter, an approximate solution based onperturbation analysis can be obtained which involves solving a 2Dintegral equation for a 3D problem. We then discuss extensions toMaxwells' equations in this context while accounting for materialjumps, and the calculation of resonant frequencies by this asymptoticapproach.